


There Is Only the War

by TheGreatCatsby



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: i love those shakespeare tragedies okay, it's like everything is burning, loki gets his revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 11:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGreatCatsby/pseuds/TheGreatCatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was no fixing him. He was unfixable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Is Only the War

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FelicityGS](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FelicityGS/gifts).



> Written from a prompt for felicitygs. The prompt? Something where everyone dies. I missed a person but, um. I don't know. There will be some meta at my tumblr.

The gaping vastness of the void would have been a gift. Had he been offered death, Loki would have embraced it, held tight and not let go. His body was pain—no, it was beyond pain. He could not stand the feeling of his own skin, squirmed at the rush of blood through his veins, cringed at each thought that passed through his head, reminding him that he was still very much alive. 

He felt empty, so empty, and wished he were anywhere else. Often he would try to mentally escape, only to be made painfully aware of his body again, anchored to himself by the tortures inflicted upon him. He could hardly think, and that scared him. 

Except, now, there was the shadow of something once familiar, something that had for too long been missing. Loki reached out to it, and felt his body less and less as he grasped on to this strand of light and held fast. 

His magic. 

If Loki were capable of it, he would have grinned, wild and free. 

He had his magic. He would escape. And he would have his revenge. 

**

Thor remembered well the day when Loki had been sent to serve his punishment. Odin had allowed, after much discussion, negotiation, and insistence on Thor’s part that Midgard was full of extraordinary people, that the Avengers could decide how best to punish Loki for his attempted take-over of their planet. 

As it happened, the Avengers were dealing with a problem of their own when Thor returned to Earth to tell them the news. The Chitauri that remained after their defeat in New York, unable to get into Asgard, had returned to Earth and demanded that the Avengers give them Loki, or else they would start another war. When Thor told them about Odin’s decision, the Avengers decided, collectively, to allow the Chitauri to imprison Loki. It involved a lengthy discussion about whether or not this was part of Loki’s plan, to be sent back to those he worked with before, but the Chitauri seemed sincerely to want to punish Loki for failing them. In the end, the Avengers agreed. Thor briefly brought Loki to Earth and handed him off to the Chitauri. 

Loki had said not a word, but the look of hatred he gave Thor before the Chitauri took him away haunted Thor more than any words could. 

He wanted, desperately, to have his brother back. He wanted Loki by his side again, always. He realized, too late, that he had taken Loki for granted. Now he stood never to get him back. He did not know how long his imprisonment with the Chitauri would last, nor whether when he returned if he would still carry that hatred with him. 

A few months later, Thor had come to see the Avengers as fellow warriors, as good as the Warriors Three and Sif. He trusted them, appreciated them in battle, and they felt the same towards him. 

When Tony Stark called them to meet and told them that Bruce Banner was missing, Thor worried. He worried about Banner as much as he would have worried about one of his friends in Asgard. And he felt a sense of foreboding that did not make sense, that this disappearance was part of something larger. 

They never did find him. 

**

Loki paced in front of the prison of ice he had built to contain Banner. Banner had not yet transformed into the monster, but the threat was there and very real. Now, he was just a man. A scientist in glasses who shivered from the cold. 

“I don’t want to do this,” he was saying. “I don’t want to let the Other Guy loose. But you have to tell me what your deal is.”

Loki continued pacing. 

“Why did you take me?” Banner asked. There was a tinge of annoyance in his voice. 

Loki whirled around to face the cell. “You allowed the Chitauri to take me,” he said. 

“You realize that we had to punish you, right?” Banner said. “We couldn’t let you get away with killing all those people and destroying the Earth.” 

“In his youth Thor killed many,” Loki mused. “You and your Avengers have blood on your hands. How are we different?” 

“Because we’re trying to do good,” Banner said. “We want to save people. Help them. You just want to watch them burn.” 

Loki smirked. “And have they not wanted to watch me burn?” 

“Thor wants you to be happy,” Banner told him, “but instead you’ve hurt him. And now he can’t trust you. Now he had no choice.” 

“Thor left me to torture,” Loki snapped. 

Banner paled. “You were—what?” 

“Oh, did you think the Chitauri were kind?” Loki asked. “Did you think they were the only ones charged with my keeping? There is much you don’t know, Dr. Banner.” 

“I didn’t—“ 

“Some might consider this a punishment,” Loki said. “I consider it a gift. After all, my jailers were not so kind.” 

“What—?” Banner started. Loki waved a hand and Banner’s voice disappeared, blocked by a spell. Loki pulled from a secret hiding place the weapon he had kept and forgotten about in the void, only to remember later. The Casket of the Ancient Winters glowed a chilled blue, less vibrant than the Tesseract but still full of power. Loki blasted Banner’s prison with more ice, allowing the hollow where Banner was kept to fill in, freezing him, trapping him like concrete. When done, the Casket vanished, he stopped and looked idly at his hands, which had turned blue. He rubbed them until they turned pink again, then returned his attention to the prison of ice. 

Banner was frozen, half-transformed, face twisted in rage. Loki smiled at his work and then murmured a few words. 

The ice shattered, and Banner shattered too. 

Loki disappeared, leaving behind carnage staining the shards of ice red. 

**

He found Rogers next, the soldier, walking the streets of Brooklyn. He would not give him the chance to try to justify himself. The perfect soldier, so very like Thor. Not Thor, he would have to remember that. But a reminder of Thor all the same. 

Loki used a knife and stabbed Rogers in the stomach. He saw Rogers’ eyes widen in shock as he realized what had happened and who had done it. Loki pushed him against the nearest wall and drew the knife upwards until it hit his breast bone. 

Rogers groaned in pain and tried to speak, but Loki held a finger to his bloodied lips. 

“There is nothing you can say,” he murmured, twisting the knife slowly, causing Rogers to gasp. “Accept it, as you would expect me and all criminals to blindly accept punishment without a word of protest. Where is your justice now, Captain?” He wrenched the knife out of Rogers’ stomach and thrust it into his heart. 

There was blood everywhere. On Loki’s hands, dripping from his pale skin now turned dark red. Rogers lay against the wall, crumpled and bleeding and so cold. 

Loki found he liked his hands better red than blue. 

**

SHIELD agents called Stark Tower to say that they had found Steve’s body after he’d been missing for a few hours. 

“There was a lot of blood,” Fury told them. “No one saw it happen. First Banner, now Rogers. We have a situation, and we need you to find out who is behind this before it gets worse. I will not lose my team, and I will not allow this murderer to get away. We have our agents looking everywhere for anything suspicious. You are targets now. Don’t do anything stupid.” 

The Avengers were wrecked. Tony’s eyes were red and he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Natasha’s expression was blank, perhaps too blank, but Clint looked furious. Thor felt keenly the loss of both Banner and Rogers, and he felt ill. He had forgotten, almost, that these men were mortal.That death could affect them all, and not only the ones they pledged to help. 

His sense of unease grew. And it bothered him that he could not give this unease a name. 

**

Loki decided that now was the time to be a little less careful. This was not a decision born of arrogance, but rather of a desire to lure those he wished to seek revenge against to him. 

He stole prototype Tesseract weaponry from a SHIELD base near New York City and left a trail just obscure enough that not many would find it. But he knew the two who would. 

Agent Romanov entered the abandoned warehouse first, gun out and ready to shoot, followed by Barton with his bow and arrow. Loki smirked as he watched them slowly make their way forward. 

Barton said, “This is a trap,” and that is when Loki decided to make his entrance. 

He disappeared and reappeared behind Barton, holding his arms fast against his body. Barton gasped, a small sound, but enough to make Romanov spin around and point her gun at him. 

“My hawk,” Loki murmured, and with a flourish, he ran a knife across Barton’s throat. Blood arced off the blade in a spray of crimson that flew through the air, some of it staining Loki’s face, some staining Romanov’s, and Barton fell to the floor. 

Loki twisted as soon as Barton began to fall, and a second later Romanov shot at him. The bullet burned as it tore through his shoulder, and he could feel his own blood streaming from the wound as he spun around again and erected a shield of magic to deflect further bullets. The pain made him gasp, but it was small compared to the tortures of the Chitauri. 

Romanov looked furious, the first show of real emotion Loki had ever seen from her. She had stopped shooting, aware that her bullets were not having the desired affect. 

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked, voice ragged. 

With his good hand, Loki reached up and wiped the blood off his face. “I considered it,” he said. “But no. This is because of what you’ve done. Now you must live with it.” 

“This isn’t because of me,” Romanov told him. Her voice barely shook with rage. “This is you drowning in the blood of other people. Can you live with it?” 

Loki grinned. 

“I have been drowning for a long time,” he told her. And then he disappeared. 

**

He did not heal the shoulder wound. He let it bleed, bandaged it, and planned his next move. 

**

By the time he got to Stark, the engineer seemed to be expecting him. Loki had teleported into the tower and interfered with Stark’s security system and his strange voice that seemed to run everything. 

When he entered the workshop, he did not make a sound. Still, Stark had been trying to say something to his machine, and when that failed, he muttered, “Fuck,” and turned around. His mouth set in a thin line as he saw Loki. “You killed them,” he said. 

“Yes,” Loki said. 

“Why?” Stark asked. “For revenge? What good does that do? It only makes you a monster. Do you feel good with their blood on your hands? Is this because of some stupid fight with Thor?” 

“It is more than that,” Loki said. “It is beyond you.” 

“And now you’ve come to kill me,” Stark said. “Great. Just great. Awesome. But it won’t change anything. I know you, Loki. You hate yourself. I can see it. Because daddy didn’t give you enough attention and now you’re trying to prove yourself, but guess what? It won’t work. You’ll always be a pathetic-“

Loki rushed forward and grabbed Stark by the collar of his shirt, throwing him to the ground and pinning him there. Stark’s words were cut off with a choke and Loki hissed, “This is for me and no one else.” 

“Keep telling yourself that,” Stark choked. 

Loki pulled up Stark’s shirt and rested a hand over where Stark’s arc reactor used to be. The blue light was gone, and in its place was skin, solid and smooth, like nothing had ever been there before. “You left me to them, and they tortured me,” Loki said. “How does that make you any better?” 

Stark swallowed. “We didn’t know-“

“Tell yourself what you will,” Loki said. 

“You expected us not to punish you?” Stark snapped. “You tried to destroy this city. You killed a lot of people. You’re killing people we care about. Right now? I wish they’d kept you forever.” 

“I killed them all,” Loki growled. 

“You’re no better-“ Stark managed, and Loki thrust a hand into his chest, breaking bone, and Stark gasped, but then Loki found what he was looking for in the blood and white shards of bone—his heart. He grasped the slick, red muscle in his hand and pulled. Blood spurted from Stark’s chest and coated everything. 

The Man of Iron was dead. 

“LOKI!” a familiar voice shouted from the door. 

Loki turned, grinning, covered in blood and grasping Stark’s heart in one hand, to face his once-brother. 

Thor looked furious, hammer in hand, the air around him charged with electricity. His anger became mixed with shock as he saw Stark’s body and what Loki held in his hand. 

“Brother,” Loki said. 

“You are not my brother,” Thor growled. “Not anymore.” 

“Now you see,” Loki said. He stood up, dropping Stark’s heart carelessly on the ground. “But you have always known. Would a brother leave his sibling to torture?” 

Thor’s expression did not falter. “Loki, stop!” 

“You do not listen!” Loki shrieked. “You left me with the Chitauri and they ruined me—they made me long for death, forced me out of my own body and put me back in and mutilated and took and ruined and destroyed! This is a monster of your own making, Odinson, and you refuse to see it!” 

“I do see it,” Thor said, grim. “I see how we have failed you. But you have made your choices, Loki. You have refused help at every turn. I offered you a second chance. I offered you forgiveness and you did not take it. Look at what you’ve done! This is not my brother.” 

A dagger materialized in one of Loki’s bloody hands. “Then kill me,” he said, “else I will destroy everything you hold dear.” And he lunged forward. 

Thor, surprised by the sudden action, could do nothing more than dodge the blow of Loki’s dagger. Loki simply redoubled his efforts, dodging Thor’s attempts to grab him and managing to stab him in the arm. Thor gasped, and Loki smirked at him and then lunged again, attempting to stab his neck. Thor grabbed his wrist and held fast, as Loki struggled to get Thor to release his grip. Thor instead managed to get Loki to release the dagger, and grabbed it before Loki could kick it away. He took the dagger as Loki made to attack again and, ignoring the disproportionate amount of pain in his arm, plunged the dagger into Loki’s shoulder. Loki staggered back and pulled the knife out. Then he grinned at Thor. 

“We are both fools,” he said. 

Thor frowned. He was gasping, breathing too heavily for the battle that had taken place. He looked at his wound, an angry gash on his upper arm, and then glared at Loki. “Poison?” he managed. 

Loki laughed. He sounded tired as well. He felt pained all over. “I always knew you would kill me,” he said. “And I you. It was our fate, was it not?” 

“That is madness,” Thor cried. “Loki, we were meant to be brothers in arms, not enemies!” 

Loki shook his head. “I think not, Thor.” 

“Stop this,” Thor rasped, swaying on his feet. “Heal yourself, if you wish to kill me. Do not let yourself die over this feud.” 

“I have long been gone,” Loki told him, “and have been waiting to welcome death with open arms. Would you deny me that as well?” 

Thor didn’t answer. He collapsed onto the floor, unable to breath. 

Loki watched him for a moment. A strange sort of sadness felt crushing in his chest, and he pushed it away. Not now. He turned away from Thor, did not think about how he would never see him again, how even if they had lived he would never be able to face Thor without seeing the disgust in Thor’s eyes at what he had done. 

But Thor deserved it. They all did. 

It was better this way. 

Loki could feel every labored beat of his heart throughout his body, could see everything dim as the shadows crept into his field of vision. He could not catch his breath, and his eyes slipped shut. 

There was no fixing him. He was unfixable. The sadness and a sharp note of terror warred to take over as his body fell to the ground. He tried to will them both away. It was too late. 

Soon, he would know peace.


End file.
